How the bleep did we wind up here?

We were working through our checklists and things were going so well, and now we’re just lost… things are coming at us from every direction and we’re not sure what’s actually happening now.

How did that happen, anyways?

In this episode of the Managing Uncertainty Podcast, Bryghtpath Principal & CEO Bryan Strawser and Senior Consultant Jennifer Otremba discuss how crisis situations can get out of control as things escalate. Topics discussed include crisis management frameworks, situational awareness, the need for a “radar screen” to detect incoming threats, and examples from recent disasters.

Episode Transcript

Bryan Strawser:                   How the bleep did we wind up here?

Jen Otremba:                        I don’t know.

Bryan Strawser:                   I mean, I don’t get it. This disaster was progressing as we expected and we were working down the checklist-

Jen Otremba:                        And we had plans, we had a plan.

Bryan Strawser:                   We had plans and now all of a sudden I don’t know where we’re at.

Jen Otremba:                        There’s so much going on.

Bryan Strawser:                   It’s coming at us from every direction and I’m just lost, I don’t know what I’m supposed to be dealing with. So you’re probably wondering what the heck we’re talking about. So there’s this idea that I learned a long time ago about when you’re dealing with crisis that our tendency is that we want to go out and create plans.

Jen Otremba:                        Which is what we tell people to do.

Bryan Strawser:                   Which we tell people to do, but we talk about … Lots of people call us and say, “We need help developing crisis or emergency plans and here’s what we want to have plans for.” And we always kind of stop the conversation and say, “So, talk to me about how you’ll lead through a crisis.” And we’ve had previous episodes where we’ve talked about the need to have a defined crisis management framework, and how do you escalate and communicate and make decisions in a crisis?

But if we go back to the beginning of that whole thing, that we know that there are things that are going to happen in our business, in a client’s business that are going to be bad. There are going to be crises, and we can probably guess what the top 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 of them are going to be, and so we tend to make plans for those because we know that these are things we’re going to have to deal with.

Jen Otremba:                        And we have experience with those things.

Bryan Strawser:                   We have experience with those things, and some of them are common. Fires happen, and severe weather happens and there’s nothing that you can do to control it. You’re going to have thunderstorms and straight-line winds and tornadoes and-

Jen Otremba:                        Yeah, just last night we had some severe storms.

Bryan Strawser:                   We had this just last night here in Minnesota, at the time that we’re recording this anyway, when we hear this it might be a few weeks down the road.

Jen Otremba:                        Yeah, that’s true.

Bryan Strawser:                   But we haven’t learned how to control the weather yet, so we know that these things are going to happen, we know that we’ll have lightning storms that will damage homes and might lead to fire, and we know that fires are going to happen and there’s going to be power outages and gas leaks, and utility outages-